Hearing For Those Who (Almost) Cannot (Hiatus)
by Tsun Queen
Summary: Matthew Williams is average enough. But he has one thing that makes him unique, just like how it is for every poor, hormonal teenager: He has a hearing disorder. As you could guess, it affects his social life. Negatively. But can a "fresh start" at the "normal" school his brother attends fix his life in more ways than one, or will it simply make him more timid than he already is?
1. There'll Be No More Turning Back

Matthew Williams was your average 8th grader. Socially awkward, yes, living on a man-made island in the middle of the sea called Pangaea, yes, but still _pretty_ normal. He lived a normal life with his loving -albeit poor- parents and brother, Alfred, in the heart of Pangaea.

But of course, every person was unique in their own way, whether it be for better or for worse, and Matthew unfortunately had gotten the short end of the stick when it came to his and Alfred's genetics. He had Cortical deafness, which made it so he couldn't hear noises once they exited his hearing range. He didn't react to loud noises at all and often heard all speech as whispers. And it sucked that the reason he had to deal with his hearing disorder was because he was born only _three days early._

Matthew steadily become quieter and quieter as his life progressed, and he couldn't understand how to say a countless amount of words, and his parents couldn't help him because of their financial situation. They hadn't even known there was anything wrong with him other than being quiet until he was 6.

So he had little to no help, nothing to lessen how little he heard from his world.

His hearing disorder made it hard for him in school, too; he had to go to a special school for other hearing impaired students for 14 years. And even then, he had a hard time focusing on any oral instruction, no matter how small the direction he was given was.

Matthew had become more and more paranoid with his disorder everyday. The thing could kill him in case of a fire, so he always had to walk with someone to make sure in case of emergency he wasn't lost and surrounded by a white noise he couldn't understand. But he still worried about being alone and would often cling to Alfred like he was his life-line, and in Matthew's mind, he was.

But luckily, Matthew's parents had managed, and Matthew could handle going to a "normal" school.

He was going to the same school as his brother, so he did his lost puppy act for the entire morning, following his brother like they were glued together once he was ready and equipped with his stuffed polar bear.

Clambering on the bus he almost missed because he didn't hear it pull up, Matthew sat in the very back of the bus, away from anyone that would be much too loud for him to hear or understand. He looked out the window after situating Kumasomething on his lap snugly and got a good look at the side of the island he almost never got to see.

He could see a strange looking trio walking to school, who were obviously going to be late, and obviously didn't care. Up ahead, he spotted another trio; Full of girls, who were much closer to school and were running to catch up with the colony of buses (which included the one Matthew and Alfred were on) chugging into the school's bus loading zone. Matthew let out a choked sounding noise that could barely be recognized as laughing as he noticed the girl trio and other trio were fighting, with one of the girls hitting an albino in the head with a surprisingly large frying pan from about 20 feet ahead of him.

The bus entered the loading zone and Matthew carefully climbed out of the seat and made sure he hadn't left anything in it. Sure that he hadn't, he exited the bus and caught up to his brother.

"So, Mattie, I forgot to ask! What classes do you have? An' put up your bear!" Alfred said mildly (though he had probably said it with endless amounts of excitement and volume, but Matthew heard it as he normally did.).

"I have this. I don't really know how to make sense of it..." Matthew whispered while he opened his red bag and stuffed Kumajitsu into it and handed his schedule to his brother to be translated into words he could understand.

Alfred looked at it for a second before speaking with a smug smile. "We have the same classes, so you can play your koala act all day, luckily."

Matthew scrunched up his face in annoyance but didn't deny that he _totally_ would. Alfred jumped a little and Matthew looked to him, his face asking silently what had happened.

Alfred grabbed his wrist and tugged him along while speaking happily. "Bell. We have to go to class now." Or, that's what Matthew guessed he said, because without seeing his face, it was hard for him to tell.

As Matthew was tugged along, he got a good look at the students at Pangaea Middle School. He could see both the trios (The albino with a fair amount of blood dripping from his arm and the girl who had hit him's mouth was moving and her face looked annoyed, so Matthew guessed she was apologizing begrudgingly.) and a bunch of other students were filing slowly into the main building to their respective homerooms.

When Matthew and Alfred finally got to their room, Matthew noticed there were globes in the corner of the room, and he guessed that this was World History and made a map in his head from the way that Alfred had pulled him so he could find it in case of emergency. (You never know!)

The teacher looked up from the work he was doing on his desk to look at Matthew and then to the class, which held some students Matthew had seen that morning. Alfred scampered to his seat and left Matthew to be awkwardly introduced. The teacher's mouth opened, but Matthew didn't hear a noise, so he watched the class' reactions while waiting to be spoken to.

"Class, this is Matthew Williams. And he has hearing dyslexia." was all Matthew heard from his new homeroom teacher's rant. He considered correcting him, but he would a) probably be ignored or b) be made into a bigger deal than he already was. Plus, that was close enough.

Matthew eyed him when he was done, and he muttered his thanks. His teacher nodded his head in the direction of a empty seat and Matthew quickly sat there to avoid the pairs of eyes on him.

Getting a good look at his surroundings, he noticed he was in the third of four rows. The class was surprisingly small, and only about half of the seats had students in them. Alfred sat just in front of him, so he had that to be thankful for, and not much else.

Matthew's eyes glanced up at a clock that was at the direct front of the room and inwardly sighed at the time. He had a feeling that the school days would be long here.

Call it (partially) deaf's intuition.

**Authors Note: Wow, here's another story for me to discontinue!**

**This is sorta Gakuen Hetalia. Sorta.**

**Anyway, Cortical deafness is a real thing. Google it. But I did change its aspects a little, because I couldn't find a hearing disorder that was actually what I was looking for. _"Cortical deafness is an auditory disorder where the patient is unable to hear sounds but has no apparent damage to the anatomy of the human ear, which can be thought of as the combination of Auditory verbal agnosia (not being able to understand/hear speech) and auditory agnosia (not being able to distinguish noises)."_ They don't hear anything, but I added details that made it more like Moderate Hearing Loss. I did profound amounts of "studying" for this and it still seems like bullshit. Don't be surprised if several things aren't fitting to logic.**

**The trios are the Bad Friend Trio and Ukraine, Hungary, and Lichtenstein. **

**Anyway, please review if you read! Tell me if I made any OBVIOUS typos that I missed. (I put have instead of half. Oh my GOD.) I love you all. And also. Gimmie plot ideas. I need them. Also, ships for this. I demand ships. You know what? I demand a whole damn armada. I don't care what the ship it is, hell it could be toilet in the girls bathroom/tree near the cafeteria. By the way, if you give a ship, give me characters to put in this story! I want to do things with this story; Even if this just gets discontinued because lemme tell chu I have NO CLUE where this story is going.**

**BUH BYE.**


	2. Shocked Me Like An Electric Eel

Matthew sighed. Second period was, of course, physical education.

He hurried into the boys locker room and entered the bathroom stall and slammed it shut (while not reacting to the sound of plastic hitting metal). Picking through his red bag, Matthew found his gym clothes. A couple of minutes of failing pretty fantastically passed, but he managed to put on his clothes.

He felt around in his bag for Kumajiro, took his bear out, and then shoved his backpack into a locker and flipped his lock on it.

After very gracefully explaining to his thick-headed teacher his hearing disorder, (Matthew wasn't sure why the P.E. Teacher didn't get the message, but didn't question it.) he entered the gymnasium and hid behind the bleachers, knowing the only people who would be inside on a day like today would be people playing a basketball game; And that, for Matthew, would be pleasantly silent. He was a little sad that he couldn't cling to his "hero" of a brother (who was playing football or something), but he did have Kuma, so he gently laid his head on Kuma's fluffy, cloth one.

He was surprised to find another person behind the wooden seating. It was a platinum haired girl who was looking skittishly at him, silently pleading for him not to tell her location.

Matthew laughed quietly and smiled as reassuringly as someone as awkward as him could manage. "Don't worry, I'm hid...ing here too. Playing sports.. Doesn't go so well when you're unable to hear most of the di-rec-tions..." He muttered the last bit quieter than he normally spoke, if that was even possible, but the girl still heard it.

"Oh, you're the boy who can't hear well, huh? I'm Katuysha Braginsky . You can call me Kat, though."

Matthew made a mental note that she had already known about him. Pangaea spread news quickly, huh?

"So.. why are you here... Kat..? If you don't mind me asking..." Katyusha looked at him for a second, obviously debating whether or not to tell him why, and spoke with false humor. "Aha, well... you see, my... 'tracks of land' make it kind of hard to run..."

It took Matthew's mind a moment to understand what she was referring to. And then his face turned a million shades of fuchsia and his lavender eyes unintentionally stared at said "land." After realizing what his traitor eyes were doing, he snapped them away and tried to focus on the basketball game that was, unsurprisingly, still too loud to be heard on Matthew's extremely insensitive ears.

And then the teacher saved him from The Most Awkward Moment Ever by telling everyone to get their lunches.

After quickly using his natural social invisibility, he escaped the bleachers without the teacher or Katyusha noticing.

* * *

Walking with his brother, Matthew got through the lunch line and sat without too much trouble. Alfred was currently shoving the disgusting looking lunch into his esophagus and Matthew slid his tray over to him so it wouldn't go to waste, even if it was just dumped into the human trashcan.

Listening to the confusing murmur that spread through the lunchroom, Matthew didn't notice Alfred trying to get his attention. He did notice, however, when Alfred silently smacked him against the face.

A choked scream came out of his mouth, and Alfred stopped it by clamping a hand over his mouth. "Mattie. Bro. Calm down. I'm sorry."

Matthew shot him a half-hearted glare and removed the hand from his mouth, even though he didn't intend to focus on speaking at the moment, with all the quiet noise that gave him a headache in the room.

"Anyway, I need to tell ya a lesson about this school." Alfred pointed to the right while speaking with amazing annunciation so Matthew could understand the 'lesson'. It was still muffled and quiet, though. Matthew allowed his anger at his brother to lighten a bit so he could focus on Alfred.

"See that guy over there?"

Matthew's eye followed the direction Alfred pointed to look at two guys; One brunette, who looked like he would cry, and the other was a platinum blonde who had a creepy childish smile.

"That's Commie Bastard. Or more well known as Ivan Braginsky. He's an asshole, and I don't want you anywhere near him, okay, Mattie? He always seems to find the flaws in people."

Matthew ignored the fact that Alfred had called his deafness a flaw.

Mostly because two things made Matthew feel dread.

One, the guy that was obviously the school bully had the same surname as Katuysha.

Two, the same guy was staring straight at him, and while he did, his smile widened considerably.

Causing a shock of fear climb up Matthew's spine.

Alfred didn't notice, because he had already gone back to his (and now Matthew's) food.

So Matthew did the logical thing.

He grabbed Kumajitsu and ran into the bathroom to avoid "Commie Bastard" and his brother.

* * *

Matthew's invisibility served him well in his time in the bathroom.

Coming out only when the third period bell rung, he ran to get his stuff and change, and managed to change into his clothes in record time.

The only person who didn't fall for Matthew's Houdini was Alfred, who waited for him outside the locker room, and almost tackled him when he came out.

Alfred wasted no time in dragging him to third period, and he spoke to Matthew along the way, but Matthew was too distracted by the surprisingly loud wind in his ears and his rushing river of thoughts to comprehend his brothers words.

He wouldn't've anyway, too complicated.

**Authors Note: I hope you notice how weirdly Matthew talks.**

**It's because people with hearing loss often have hard times comprehending, saying, and occasionally writing words. I probably should've mentioned that in the first chapter. That's why it says Mattie doesn't understand stuff a lot. But I should also say that he's not dumb, either; Just not huge on the whole vocal scene.**

**Also, huge note on lunch scene.**

**It's stated that people with hearing loss have a VERY hard time hearing people when there are other noises to distract them. I assume that's like, loud static in the background of quiet speech. Which I would have a hard time hearing, too.**

**Still, gimmie ideas, I needses. I can only go for so long with _my_ ideas.**

**Buh BYE!~**


	3. Hiatus

Hello! This is a notice!

Due to me not actually caring, this story is on hiatus. Possibly permanently.

It may start back up when I get new inspiration, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Tsun Queen out!


End file.
